Leaving O.R. Tambo

After our tour of Soweto, it was time to go. Here is video of the scene at the international departures terminal at O.R. Tambo International Airport. It was a vibe unlike that of any other airport I'd ever been to. They put on one last-ditch, tempting effort to get us to stay.

Quick historical tidbit: the airport is named after Oliver Tambo, friend and law partner of Nelson Mandela. The two founded the ANC Youth League in 1943 and the first black-owned law firm in the early 50's. The government banned him for five years in 1959, so the ANC sent him to London to mobilize international opposition to apartheid. He didn't return to South Africa until 1991--over 30 years in exile. He died in 1993.

Bill and I were satisfied that we extracted all that we could have out of this particular trip. However, there were many, many stones left unturned. Just a few possible future trip ideas:

• Cape Town + Robben Island + wine country + big game parks + Garden Route coastline
• Kruger National Park
• Free State battlefields commemorating the Boer wars and Zulu Nation
• Sun City
• Diamond mines of Kimberley

Madiba

Soweto's favorite son Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is South Africa's George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Every single person with whom we spoke about Mandela talked about him in awestruck, reverent tones. They commonly refer to him as "Madiba," his Xhosa honorary title. Legend, icon, revolutionary, Nobel Peace Prize winner, world-historical, Great Man: all the above apply.
It was great that he had a chance to make an appearance (above) at Soccer City Stadium prior to the World Cup final. He missed the opening ceremony a month earlier because, that morning, a drunk driver killed his 13-year-old great-granddaughter. So his Cup was one of sadness and ambivalence, simultaneously proud for his country and aching for his family. He certainly deserved the overwhelming cheer he received from the crowd.
During our tour of Soweto, Bill and I had the opportunity to visit his humble house on the corner of Vilakaze and Ngakane Streets in Orlando West, just blocks down the hill from the Hector Pieterson Museum, site of the 1976 student uprising. Perhaps not coincidentally, Vilakaze Street is also home to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, making it the only street in the world to claim two Nobel Peace Prize winners. And, I have to say, it is a pretty peaceful and lively place.
Today, the government-issue, "matchbox" house--complete with corrugated aluminum roof!--to which Madiba moved in 1946 is now the site of the Mandela Family Museum. Outside is a newly-created brick courtyard featuring quotations from his writings and speeches...
Our tour guide LOVES Obama and fist-bumped us immediately upon learning we are American...
More quotes, this from a 1977 letter to his wife Winnie...
Here's what he wrote from prison in 1976 upon getting word of the student uprising...
This is the tree out front where the Mandela family buried the umbilical cords of all their newborns to bring them luck and connect them to one another (or something like that)...
The bullet hole below (now filled in by the restoration project) is one of many in the exterior wall of the house courtesy of the police. They spent years setting up shop on the corner opposite the house and firing rounds at it, breaking windows and terrifying those inside. This continued well after Nelson went to prison; they considered Winnie just as subversive. Note that the wall outside the children's room bore the brunt of the police attacks...
Having been restored for museum traffic, the interior of the house has just four small rooms, each of them containing interesting pictures and artifacts from his life and work. They asked us not to take pictures inside. If I could have, I would have taken pictures of Sugar Ray Leonard's world championship boxing belt, a gift from the boxer to Madiba. Also in there were many letters from universities in the United States, particularly historical black colleges, congratulating him on his release from prison or his election as president.

There was an early-1990's resolution from the legislature of the State of Michigan apologizing for the CIA's role in ratting out Mandela's location to the apartheid regime in 1962, leading to his arrest and eventual incarceration. We had no idea such a seeming betrayal had taken place, so at first we were aghast that our government would do such a thing. Then we saw a photo on the wall of Mandela cozying up to Fidel Castro and the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. Hey! Long lost Comrade!
The United States, in the era of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, viewed Mandela as both a terrorist--he was a founder and leader of the ANC's militant wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe--and a communist. Therefore, he represented an important African communist "domino," and a threat to American interests in the region. Also, in the year 1962, the US was still in the early stages of the civil rights movement at home. Martin Luther King, Jr. had not yet declared that he had a dream, and the National Party's apartheid regime was not yet the international pariah it would become. The American relationship with apartheid South Africa was relatively friendly, and the two nations did not hesitate to engage in Realpolitik, where the ends justified the means.

Yada yada yada...militant tendencies...27 years in prison...government in exile...yada yada...peaceful transition of power...Nobel Prize...yada yada...elected president...yada yada...global icon...yada yada...World Cup...and he shows up at Soccer City.

Felicitaciones, España!

It's all over. As you're probably aware, Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas found elven Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta sneaking past the Dutch back line and found the back on the net in the 116th minute to win the World Cup. It made for an exciting end to a pretty ugly game, with 14 yellow cards and plenty of diving and flopping. I'm not sure soccer earned any new fans today. But Andres Iniesta never has to buy a drink in Spain again. So he's got that going for him. Here's the goal...

Felicitaciones a la gente al restaurante Casa Juancho en Miami y todos de nuestros amigos españoles. Campeones del Mundo! La gente en Madrid...

In related news, El Pulpo Paul continued his run of perfection. Now he's on to bigger and better things. Next up, he is going to advise on the European debt crisis, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the US mid-term elections. Then he's going to Goldman Sachs.

Facebook's World Cup Data

Take a moment to check out this cool interactive look at Facebook status update data during this year's World Cup, courtesy of the New York Times. (Hat tip Shel.) I love when people find innovative ways to make large amounts of information digestible. A couple of takeaways:

• The little graphs for each player are really neat. You can tell exactly what time Landon Donovan scored for the US against Algeria on 6/23.
  
• Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo is featured significantly throughout the tournament--he's #1 as late as July 9--even though he did virtually nothing during the Cup.
• Very few African players cracked the top spots in any given day. Probably due to the relative lack of Internet access penetration in Africa.
  

Soweto's Underbelly

The first place in Soweto where we disembarked from Alan's car was a decrepit section with dirt streets and no running water. It was abject poverty on par with what I had only previously witnessed in the Philippines and Cambodia. It is very humbling to visit such a place as a well-to-do westerner. You immediately feel "expensive" as you become conscious of the watch on your wrist, the cell phone in your pocket, the camera attached to your belt, and the sneakers on your feet. At first, we were a little unsure as to how secure it would be, but Alan and our subsequent neighborhood guide (whose name escapes me, but he is pictured below in the Bafana Bafana jersey talking with Bill) assured us we would be okay, and that it was okay to take pictures. So pictures we took.
Our guide first took us to the tiny Embizweni day care center/school for young children, from 2-10 years old. Here's the sign out front...
The children's artwork on the wall...
The scant books, toys, dinosaurs, and other educational supplies...
The woman who runs the day care center asked us to sign a guest book and make a donation. She says that almost all of their funding comes from donations from tourists. Now we knew why this was our first stop--it was an excellent opportunity for these people to separate Bill and me from our rand. We were fine with that, and we agreed to her request willingly because this place needed the money.

Down the street from the day care, this house has corn and other crops growing in the front yard...
A woman getting water from the neighborhood well...
It was a Saturday, so all the kids in the neighborhood were out in the street playing. This little guy hammed it up for the camera...
A couple of girls...
A youngster juggling a soccer ball...
Much of the country's soccer talent comes from streets like these in Soweto. Indeed, not too far away from this neighborhood, Nike built an immaculate multi-million-dollar training center (um, priorities?). The best players go on to play for Bafana Bafana and professionally for the local Soweto club teams: the fantastically-named Kaizer Chiefs or their arch-rival Orlando Pirates. These teenagers were kicking it around...
This group of guys thought strategically when they noticed I had taken their picture. Once I snapped it they asked to see it in my camera. When I let them, they used the opportunity at close proximity to ask for a few rand to get something to eat. We gave out a few rand to several of them...
At the top of the street, where Alan was parked, this guy and several colleagues were selling both vuvuzelas and their handmade art. Bill and I both bought small handmade stone sculptures, and I also picked up a handmade beaded figurine blowing a vuvuzela.
Everyone we met in this neighborhood was as nice and as welcoming as anybody we met throughout our trip. The living conditions have not affected their spirits. We asked Alan what was the number one thing that Soweto needed to pull all of its people out of poverty and into the middle class, and he responded, "Housing." While many parts of Soweto are nicer, there are simply too many people living like we saw in this neighborhood who will have a very difficult time creating a better life for themselves. The poverty we witnessed is both an ugly legacy of apartheid and a major challenge facing the South African government.

Yes We Can

Every black person (and many white people) we met brought up President Obama as soon as they found out we are American. Or they just wanted to fist-bump us, as was the case with our tour guide at Nelson Mandela's house (more on that later). Obama is clearly revered throughout the continent. Many of them mentioned him in the same breath as Nelson Mandela. We responded by agreeing that what Obama symbolizes is extraordinary, but warning that his reality is that he has a very difficult job right now, his poll numbers are sinking, and he may not get re-elected. Hey, not to be a jerk, but that's the reality, and people need to hear it.

Obama also has a place in American soccer fan culture. We saw numerous hand-made signs declaring "Yes We Can!" at the games. We even chanted it during the second half of the USA-Slovenia game. I suppose most US soccer fans are from blue states, or at least fit the Democrats' worldview more than the Republicans'.

Picks for the Final Weekend

My quarterfinal and semifinal picks were lousy. I got half right both rounds. Listening to me is no different than consulting a flipped coin. It makes no difference, but I have Deutschland in the 3rd-place game and Nederland in the final. Yep, "Hup Holland!" I agree with what comedian Drew Carey said on NPR last night from Cape Town, that Spain is his head's pick, and Holland is his heart's. I'll go with heart.

One fellow you probably should pay attention to, if you aren't already, is Paul the Octopus. A resident of Oberhausen, Germany's Sea Life aquarium, Paul has somewhat absurdly garnered worldwide media attention by correctly picking each of the games Germany has been involved with, including their losses to both Serbia and Spain. After the Spain loss, German fans reportedly posted death threats on his Facebook page (where 2,667 people say they "like" him as of this morning), threatening to turn him into sushi. But as they say, "Don't eat the messenger." On the other hand, Spaniards have adopted him as their own, adoringly gushing over "El Pulpo Paul." Here's the video of Paul picking Spain to win the final (he also picked Germany over Uruguay)...

Note all of the clicking in the background from a phalanx of international photographers documenting this international news event, which was broadcast live throughout Europe.

If mollusks don't do it for you, Mani, a parakeet from Singapore, has weighed in with his pick of Holland in the final...

Sadly, Mani does not appear to have a Facebook page.